The Experience of Urban Poverty, 1723-1782: Parish, Charity and Credit

This comparative study of urban poverty is the first to chart the irregular pulse of poverty's encounters with officialdom via multiple urban institutions. It exploits an unusual methodology to secure new perspectives from familiar sources. Highly localised characteristics of the welfare economy generated a peculiarly urban milieu for the poor. A concentration here on traditional and county towns (communities where it remained feasible to operate the poor law by retaining the parish as the unit of government) permits a detailed analysis of poor people who did not become lost in a crowd. Individual chapters examine the parameters of workhouse life when the preconceptions of contemporaries have been stripped away, the reach of institutional charities such as almshouses, schools and infirmaries, and the surprisingly broad clientele of urban pawnbrokers. This is achieved via meticulous matching of individuals who fell within the purview of two or more authorities. At its best, this technique yields partial biographies of the poor. The result is a unique insight into the survival economics of urban poverty, arising not from a tidy network of welfare but from a loose assembly of options, where individuals positioned themselves repeatedly to fit official, philanthropic, or casual templates of the 'deserving'. This book will be central for historians of English poverty and welfare, valuable for researchers on eighteenth-century social and economic life, and important for undergraduates seeking to place poor relief in the wider context of experiences of poverty.